


Pride & Flame

by skye_of_stars



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Halls of Mandos, not feanor-apologetic but yes sympathetic, self-actualization, self-realization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-10 09:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20525477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skye_of_stars/pseuds/skye_of_stars
Summary: Fëanaró is dead, and has been so for thousands of years, making little to no progress towards reembodiment no matter how many of his crimes he denounces.But perhaps there is still the spark of something within him.





	1. Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally the same story and themes I always write, if you've read anything else I've written. Sorry not sorry. There's four chapters planned, of which two and a bit are already finished, so I think this thing's gonna get completed.

This, I am: the roaring of fire in my veins, the pulse against my skin pulling me forward, the light in my hands as I sculpt the—

No.No, I am not this, not anymore, for my body has scattered to ash some thousands of years past, and I have been told to put forth my great effort and strength of will towards creating another, and I have been told that requires healing, and I have resisted it, and I have given in, I have denounced each and every one of my actions and that has brought me no closer to the sensation of again having true hands to create with, eyes to see with—

_I was wrong_.I have been told that if I truly believe that, if I repeat those words enough, I will heal. After all, what Elf has done more damage than I? None! I am the scourge of my kind, the Kinslayer, and for so long the world suffered under my weight—

But no.I do not believe that either.For how can I believe that all I have wrought across the span of my life was wrong? It was I who saved the light of the Trees.It was I—

_That is but false pride_, Námo would tell me.Námo who cursed me!But who am I to say I was not meant for curses? I burned in body, I burned in soul, but before that, I burned much around me, the great swan-ships never to be seen again.And then of course there is the matter of the Oath.Five of my sons unhealed here away from the world just as I am, one lost along the coastlines, and the last, my firstborn—

None yet know where he is.

I suspect he is more gone to us all than even the mortals.

That, too, is something I have wrought.

There has been little to do but think these past thousands of years, think and _reach,_ attempt to recreate my body as only I can, for the hroa and fea are so closely connected that only I myself through my will can recreate what I could be, but only if I am healed, only if I am whole in fea as well.Clearly, I am not.

At least it is not dark here.There is light and the simulacrums of landscapes, painted gardens of death made by Námo’s hand, long winding rivers of rest… but never have I wanted rest, never. I only ever wanted the forward push of creation, of knowledge, the fire spilling out from me and into all I touch, making something new in each of its turns. But I cannot be healed, not even close, not if I still want _that_.

It is by my will that I may regain a body, and so the fact that I have not yet managed such can be due to no fault but my own.

Is it also false pride to wonder if any has suffered as I suffer now, thousands of years of failure under my unmade skin?

***

I remember—

There was light greater than the world has since known.There was light golden and silver, and they interlaced each other like fingers locked together in promise.The grass swayed in such a light, each stone shone from each angle, and all things exhibited their every possible color.

My father did not love these lights as I did; my father yet missed the stars.I hope for his sake that he can see his fill of them now, reembodied long before me as he is.

But I was not born under stars.I was born under tree-light in what has been called paradise and perfection both.I was born into the calm of peace and yet I have never exhibited any of its qualities.I am and was the fire moving forward across the world, forcing time into progression even in a place where that was never needed, making change take form in a land of stillness.Perhaps that, too, was my pride.Perhaps I should have appreciated the stillness more—

But how could I, when that was not how I was?

Even in my childhood lessons, I was told that each thing was commanded by Eru Himself to be itself, that that is how every plant and creature and stone and river came to be, that that is what we are as well, at the core of us.I could no more have been still than I could have been water, or mortal, or not Fëanáro.

Is that, then, my mistake as well? Simply to be who I was?

I would imagine that could not possibly be a mistake, and yet I have heard it hinted in whispers, hinted in ways people do not even speak about the Enemy—even he had a correct way of being himself, even though he chose not to take it.

But long-dead as I am due to my own fault, it should not be my place to judge.

***

To be of the Firstborn is to remember all that one has ever experienced, and yet no memory is inscribed in me deeper than that greatest moment of creation. I captured the light from two trees into three gems. Or, others called them gems—they were more than that, more by far. 

Sometimes, in strange twilit-shifting moments here in the halls, I wonder if they are more myself than even I am. 

If that is the case, there is perhaps some comfort in one remaining in the sky forevermore—that is, if I am content to have _myself_ so far from _me_, never to be reached by me ever again.What is better, for all to see the otherwise-dead light, or for me to be whole? Námo says one while he implies the other, he tells me I must be whole and yet he tells me that clearly I must have cared far too much about myself and my own goals, and that is why I am so broken as I now am.

But yet, that moment, that one moment of creation…

Well, it wasn’t one moment. It was weeks when I hardly drank nor ate, and before that it was years staring upon the trees, following the patterns of their light, memorizing it so well that I could carve a gem into the same exact facets as their patterns.In that way, it was exactly like devising a system of lines and twirls to represent the sounds we speak from our mouths, only even more precise.

I could not get a single cut wrong on those gems.

And many of those cuts, ah, they were far too small for the eye to see. I used obsidian scalpel and focused laser, and every drop of my will, of my desire, of my _self_, nothing beyond the flame beneath my skin keeping me alive and upright until they were all made.

I had not planned for three; I had hoped for two.But when I still had my will and my wits about me after the second, I pushed farther, and that third gem… well, no one other than I can tell it apart from the others, I believe, but I know it. Even to look on it seems to be to see every one of my thoughts, past and present and future, crystallized into a single object.

I wonder if I am very lucky or very unlucky that it is that very Silmaril that hangs now in the sky.

***

“You are far too jealous,” my wife said between peals of her hammer on iron. 

“I am merely protective of what is mine.”

“Those gems are not _yours_, dearest.They are the light of the trees, and the trees belong to all of us.”

How could I tell her that I had put far more into them than that? They were a translation from one sort of light to another, yes, but my sight and desire and knowing had bled to them over those long and yet ephemeral days. I had thought she would understand this, being as much a craftsman as I, but perhaps I was foolish to believe anyone would truly understand.

Or perhaps it would have been better if indeed no one did understand.

***

“We will follow you, father.”

Had I manipulated them into this?Looking back now, I do not know how to tell.At the time, I believed they loved me, I saw the reflection of my fire in each of their eyes, seven sons, seven who I wished to grow great, perhaps even greater than myself.Perhaps they were the only people I ever would have suffered to see become greater than I.

What I do know is that I avoid the five who are here in the halls.No matter how much I do or do not believe Námo’s words on any given day, I am certain that my presence would not help them heal. Not when they have each of them died for my cause.

And even here, bodiless as I am, to float from one region of these colorful places of death to another is to announce my presence.People here are seen by their spirits, more clearly the more healed they are, and though no one would call me healed, heat wafts off my presence like a hot summer day.

There was great heat that day too, of course.The day they each took their oaths, repeating after me, their support feeling like strength in my veins.

***

I was smiling when I died.I had done so _much,_ I was so much—and I felt that in those moments as well.I had held my best against an army, against creatures of fire, but not a single one of them was a true match for me, my sword rang out in the air—and I was satisfied.

My sons carried me away, and I believed in them.I believed in myself.I believed utterly.

And my body became ash and my soul fled here, as I knew it must.

And Námo with words as quiet and yet full of presence as the beats of owl’s wings repeated his curse upon me, bearing waves of clear-as-water judgement upon me the instant I attained awareness here.

So it has been.


	2. Spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ,

Most days, most times of shifting light and shadow—they are the same.I hold my presence along the river or the meadow, or most often the high place that closely resembles the sky, and I think.There are few who wish to speak to me, after all.

So I do not expect it when a flare of _presence_ walks onto the meadow below me.Someone _solid_, skin and limbs and hair all fully-formed and unshifting, so real that the world around me seems to lose what little hint of realness it once had.

Someone is visiting.Someone _alive_.

But in the next second, reality leeching from the ‘ground’ near my presence, I realize that this is not a mere someone, no, I _recognize_ the twist and turn of her fea beneath and within and in the form of her hroa, even if it has in some ways changed greatly since I last saw her. 

And as nothing is physical here, least of all me who is not healed in the slightest, I simply _think_ and I am next to her in seconds, the ‘air’ around her heating.

“Artanis,” I say.Or, not _say_—it is more like a thought than speech, but as all of the Firstborn can communicate with each other via such thoughts, it is hardly an inconvenience… even if it is proof that I am nowhere near succeeding at returning to life.

She purses her lips, blows out air that seems filled with contempt.“Ages have passed since I last went by that name.But I wonder if you would even know of those, unchanged as you seem, _Fëanor._”

Ah.So she does not have any more fondness for me now than she did when I asked her for her hair.“I am sorry to intrude on your visit, in that case,” I say.“I am sure you are here for someone quite other than me.”

“Indeed.And I do not see it fit to tell you who.”

“Nor was I intending to ask—“

“_Truly_?” Her eyes narrow, her sneer reminds me what wonderful tools bodies are for conveying emotion. “Then perhaps it may be said that you have been changing, here.”

“That has been my aim.Denounce my crimes, move far away from them—“

“Ah, but you have so many crimes.”

“I imagine that is why it is taking so long.”

She _tsks_, hair so long, so _real_, floating around in what is not air.“Perhaps you should hasten your denouncement, in that case.You must have so very many plans for when you get back.So many _ambitions_.”

“I beg your understanding, but that is entirely what I intend _not_ to have.”

Now her expression changes again, her sneer becoming a wide-eyed fluttering that still somehow reads as disgust.“What a strange thing,” she says at length.“The great Fëanor brought low, groveling here for his crimes.To think that you of all people could ever become _pitiful_.”

I would blink, were I to have eyes; I would step back, were I to have limbs.What I manage instead is a vague backwards float, my hardly-visible fea dripping with envy at the thought of a true body.

“I see I have offended you.”

I almost say, _it is not befitting of my healing to be offended_, but the words sound horrid and twisted in my head.Pitiful, she said… I wonder. 

She looks at me, asking me to speak—I feel it in what she allows me to perceive of her thoughts._Or have you become too craven? _she silently adds.

“I had thought you intended to be on your way,” I simply say instead.

She smiles, but the expression does not mean on her what it would on almost anyone else. She is _plotting_, amused, wishing to see into the truth of things—

I wished that, once.Or, no, still do, the flame burning somewhere in me even without fuel—

“What passes for a seating area here, I wonder?” Artanis—or no, _Galadriel_—says.

“Nothing.”

“How boring.And for thousands of years!I do wonder how you’ve handled it.”The needling in her eyes needs no verbal expression, whether thought or spoken aloud—_or have you_?

“You are indeed quite lucky to have never died.”

“Or less foolish.” She inclines her head.“Though you wouldn’t know anything of that, I am sure.”

I am halfway to bristling that she has not decided to leave me yet, that she has chosen instead to taunt me—and yet, there are so few chances given to me to speak to someone, so few who would wish to speak to me.So this is a chance, then, to at least find interest—

How long has it been since I did that?

“I wonder what it would take,” Galadriel says, as if I had not entirely failed to respond to her last jab, “for one such as you to finally regain a body.”

“I am told the denouncing is very important.” I pass her the sense of a wry smile along with those words—it has been a long time since I did that, as well.

“Yes, but… wholeness._Completeness_.It would seem that to have a body is to _be_ someone, and that requires more than pushing aside what you once were.”

I almost scoff.“Everything I have been is quite liable to get things set ablaze, to kill kin, to lead my own son into what may well be the void itself—or haven’t you heard?”

She laughs then, peals and peals of it, as if she is laughing for _joy_, although I know her true emotion must be something else entirely.“So you do not want to be someone, then.You want to _un-_be.” She looks to me, _right at me_, to the center of what I would consider to be my awareness within the shape of the heat I project—and she smiles.“If that is your desire, I daresay you are doing quite well.One of our kind cannot truly _be_ any _less_ than you are being right now.”

Offense.Hatred—how _dare _she say that to _me_! Searing anger hotter than the fires of the earth.I push each of those emotions down, for they—

—are part of me.

If I had hands, I would look at them, mouth agape._What have I done? _I would say in a true voice, _what have I become_? But I have not become and I _am not_, and so I can do none of these things.

“I see your insight has not dimmed with the ages that have changed your name,” I finally manage to say.

“I would hope not.As I alluded to before, I believe there is a _reason_ I survived when you and Fingolfin and Fingon and Celebrimbor and Gil-galad and Thingol and Turgon and all else of your time did not.”

“The fact that you are not a fool,” I say.

“_Less_ of a fool,” she corrects with a smile.“Now, if you’ll excuse me, there really is someone who may be waiting for me.” 

“Wait,” I say, and she does.

_So you do retain some will after all_, she allows me to hear her think.

“You… have returned.Clearly.And that means the exile is…”

“No more,” she confirms.“And neither is Elvish presence on Middle-Earth.That is the mortals’ domain now, free at last of Sauron.”

_Sauron_. I recall hearing that he had risen to power in Morgoth’s absence—but I do not truly know the extent of his deeds, the movements of these last ages, despite the fact that news reaches Mandos, both the person and the place.I wonder if that is because I have not sought it out, or because it has to some extent been kept from me._Not beneficial to your healing_. Then, perhaps those two options are one and the same.

“It was a mortal who did it,” she adds.“A mortal who brought the ring—the object of Sauron’s damnable fea—to the site of its creation, allowing it and thus its master to be destroyed.Though not quite by his own hand.Though perhaps that is a tale for another time, long and arduous, as was his journey.I gave him what I could, little as that was against such a threat.”

She is not singing, and yet her reminiscence is nearly enough to bring these moments to life before my eyes.And within them, a light, glistening—

“Ah, yes.The light of Eärendil.I did give him that.”

A reflection of the third Silmaril.A reflection of my greatest work.

“Are you upset?” she asks.

I am many things, but I do not expect I am that.“No,” I manage.“Rather, I… thank you.Perhaps.” It has done some good, then—_I_ have done some good—despite it all. “Strange though that may be,” I say, to my spoken thoughts or to my hidden ones, I do not know.

“May you progress well along your path toward re-embodiment,” Galadriel says, and I know the farewell for what it is—but it sounds strangely heartfelt all the same.

And as for my own heart, though it has not beaten in so long—well. A spark of a smile would cross my face were I to have one, because I am beginning to get _ideas_.


	3. Flame

_Námo_—!

I would curse his name clearly, as ‘aloud’ as thoughts can manage to be, but I do not truly want his attention.Not now, or perhaps not ever—it is certainly the case that if I never saw him again in all my eternal existence, I would be glad of it.

For he is the one who has led me down a path which leads nowhere but into the darkest wood, somewhere without the light even of the stars.He has told me hundreds of thousands of things and they have all blurred together into this path, step after step, _denounce your killings, denounce your ambition, to heal you must not take offense_—

The most treacherous paths are the ones with some safe steps.

But simply knowing, now, that there is something of me worth keeping—or, should I say, _letting_ myself know, for I must have known all this while, that is why I fought so, that is why I seemed to Námo so unskilled at healing myself—that is nowhere near all that I will need.

I must keep some.But not all, even I am not that foolish.Whatever brought me to so easily spill blood—that must be excised like a gangrenous limb.But no more._No more_.

I am Fëanáro, Fëanáro, Fëanáro—

Spirit of fire, soul of fire, self of fire—all of these are one and the same.That is why I always and forever burn, and have burned, and will burn.

Like lasers burning into a gem fit to hold the light of the world…

That moment is inscribed in me perfectly, and yet I want more of it. To let myself feel at all is to want more of it, intensely, glowingly, desperately. It has been said that for my kind a single moment of greatness can be forever, and yet…

Yet what if, perhaps, that was never what I wanted? To tie myself to the Silmarils so, and imagine no further, greater creation.Me, of all people! I who moved the tides of the world forward even as all my people were safe in Aman and needed no progress, I who could never stop nor cease—!

_Now you know what you must do_, I whisper to myself in a voice that both is and isn’t my own.

***

I did not believe in any future other than a continued past.My father had just died, my world and the world of all I knew had just crumbled.So perhaps I can be forgiven for that error of thought.

When the trees were killed, even I wanted the world to go back to what it was.

And _what the world was _to me was entwined with _what was most important to me in the world_, that act of creation which was also the object of creation which was also the light we all mourned. My Silmarils. And so I swore to find them, believing in no other possible future.

***

Or did my mistake begin even before then?

Certainly, before I had sworn any Oaths, I was known for my pride.And yet I am now certain that I did _not_ believe I could create a great work ever again, that my greatest moment had already come and gone—and yet people around me called that pride. 

Perhaps it was because it appeared so from the outside, whereas from the inside it was a down-swirling wind of jealousy, I despised the thought of seeing anyone rise greater than me—

Is that, then, pride?_Is it,_ Námo?To not believe in the possibility of my future being as meaningful and _mine_ as my past—_that_ is what you call pride? _That_ is the ailment to which you prescribe believing in myself even less, hating my works, each and every one of them?

No wonder I have not healed.

No wonder in the slightest.

***

So this, then, is what it comes to: _work_.Focus.Will.

These are things I was once skilled at—in fact, things at which I was once counted the greatest among the living. I wonder who holds that title now, whether they would speak to me once I—

But no.I must not look too far ahead.I must _focus_.

I suspect the process of recreating a body is not so different from the process of capturing and recreating world-light within a set of gems.It is a matter of focus, of seeing the patterns of spirit where they flow and matching them to matter.

I know this, then.I remember each second of those weeks like a gem-drop in its own right, and I _know_ how to do this, how to see—

—but ah, it is truly similar, is it not?

And so who is to say that my new body cannot itself be my next great work?

***

The patterns that weave through me are akin to fire; all who have ever looked upon my countenance have known that, it has always been easy to see.Sometimes wisps would escape from my old eyes, curling out from the embers inside me—and the same will hold of my new eyes.

But first: to memorize those patterns, to commit to memory every bit of myself, which of course requires seeing it all, noticing it—

For many of my kind, I have been made aware, this process once begun in earnest takes centuries.

For me, I suspect it will take years.

***

_Soul of fire, the flickering embers growing bright—_

_ Find each and every pathway of spirit, discover the currents they rend in the bright-hot skies—I, never a child of the stars—_

_ Firstborn of Valinor, Firstborn of Aman, the first of my kind born under the Trees—_

Is it any wonder that impossible light has always drawn me so?

_Fëanaró, _I say to myself, and in the depths of flame the movement of my speech feels almost akin to a tongue—

There is so much to recreate.

And I wonder even through the veils of my focus, will my new hands too be calloused? Will I wish them to be, is that part of the fea that courses through me? And I answer myself, yes, it is, for I will need such hardness to _craft_, to create and create and create—

My people have come home here to Aman, where there is peace, where I hear there is the desire of rest. It is just like the era when I was born, only on the opposite side of time, after destruction rather than before, after victory as well, though bittersweet a victory it was according to the whispers I hear in the gardens.My role, then, too, will be much the same, for I am the one who I am, the fea so fire-lit as to change the course of time, to create progress, to _create_—

If I create, if I _believe_ in my creation enough, I will not destroy.That is my hope.To not again destroy, not because I shackle my hands down and prevent all movement but because I _busy_ my hands, because I have better things to do—

—Nelyafinwe, Nelyafinwe, will I ever see my first son again—

—will the five dead ever return to meet me, will they wish to speak to me—

Yes, I still have regrets.Whether they will abate, I cannot say, but they are stuck in me like a scar.

Yes, a scar.I should have one, shouldn’t I? Seven sharp lines at odds with each other across my chest, to represent my sons whom I led into death and despair.And as for the killings… well, those are represented by the same, because those two mistakes are as well one and the same. It was the killing of others that killed my sons in turn, the kinslayings that convinced them no worse wrong could be done, and so why turn back now? So much already had been spent on the Oath, how could they ever turn away now and prove all that bloodshed worthless… or so I suspect they thought.

By the time they were that deep into the blood they waded through, I was already long dead.

So, yes, I make for myself eyes like fire and calloused fingers—and a great, impossible to ignore, tapestry of scars.

My fea is entangled in its own past, each memory affecting its flow—and so my hroa should be the same.

Look, I am starting to feel my fingers.

***

Paths of spirit become fibers of muscle—the Elven fea is well-suited to this, that is why we are what we are. Meant for the world, each and every part of our spirits befitting of body and life and the ground beneath our feet—

I knit a thought, a memory, an emotion, a way of being into lung tissue—

Words spoken into the cells of my tongue, physicality emerging from my very being—

I’ve seen the movements of my fire, I know it well enough to turn it into blood, to let it be blood—

—because it _wants_ to be—

—I want to be—

—I want this body!

Let me touch, oh let me touch the world!Let me grasp it into my hands, let me form metal into material, one thing into another, changing, creating, changing!Let me speak my words into the air, let them become vibrations rippling the fabric of the world!Let my feet touch the ground, let the air become my breath and touch my lungs, let my eyes see and emit _light_!

My thoughts are a spark—

My thoughts are a formation—

My thoughts roar me into being like a fire lit from kindling, and the moment of that lighting lasts a year, my ignition a single, sustained focus—

And then I am.

***

I am.

***

I am.

***

And the world around me is not, it is untethered shifting colors of spirit and I am not.Rather than simply existing, I am _alive_—

I laugh, and study the waves of each sound as they hit the not-air—

And I get to walking, step after step on these _legs_, feet attached to them, my hair flowing behind my back, black and yet lit from within as if by flame—

—I am flame—

—_Fëanaró—_

With skin and hands and blood to call my own, I walk out of Mandos and into the bright, impossible light of the stars, none of them for me except for the one lingering at the western horizon, the very brightest.

I am seeing this and all else with my eyes, with my true eyes—

I fall to my knees on the gentle grass just outside the halls, tears spilling from those same eyes.Gratitude—gratitude to _myself_, for no other has given me this new life—which is to say, my emotion is another kind of pride—but certainly not such ‘pride’ that I would attempt to stop others from seeing that very star in the sky, it is for us all now—my _true_ pride will allow that—for I love the knowing that something so dear and needed was made by my hand—

And now, again, I have hands.

So I will make again.Something.Anything.Everything.I will create and create until the very ending of this world, and nothing, least of all myself, will stop me.


	4. Pyrophytic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one, guys! This is somewhere between a last chapter and an epilogue, a brief look at Fëanor's "what now" now that he's re-embodied.

I should not be surprised at the first person to greet me in my newly-embodied form, but I am.Or then, perhaps I am more surprised at the fact there is someone here to see me at _all_, walking to me from the other side of the great field of flowers in which my mother…

Well, in which she chose to be what I later became. Un-being.Floating.

I hope for her sake that it suits her more than it does me.

These thoughts—and their opposite and counterpoint, the joy of each of my footsteps along the true, existing ground—occupy me such that I do not even greet the one who came to greet me until she says something first.

“I said there was something interesting to see, did I not?” Galadriel says.

No, she is not speaking to me, I realize—she is turning to her companion, who I hardly noticed at first, so smoke-like he seems.But he is not smoke, he is body, fresh and young-looking as any elf and yet appearing older than even the most weary among us.His skin appears like leather around his grey-and-white robes, and yet his eyes shine with a nearly familiar light.

But I do not have time to puzzle over that before in a single motion he rips off one of his robes and drapes it around me.

Ah.Right.Recreating my hroa did not include garments with which to clothe it.

“We need to get this one inside,” the man says.“And give him warm tea, too!”

I blink, wondering why I am being thought of as if I were a lost puppy.“Do you know who I _am?_” I ask… although I do feel grateful for the robe.

“Who you are does not change in the slightest whether warm tea is good for you.” He smiles, an old smile, an ancient smile.“I learned that from the hobbits.”

“I have not heard of these hobbits, but I will accept your kind offer,” I say.“Although you may come to regret it, in time.”

“Is that meant as a threat?” he asks, while beside him Galadriel’s eyes shine with mischievous light.She is not going to tell him anything much, is she? She would rather watch all the strange events she can find play out for her own amusement—and in that way, she has not changed one bit.

“I meant only that not all would appreciate my name being associated with theirs, even for a day.”

“I know your name.”

“Then you have the advantage of me, sir.”

“He is Olórin,” Galadriel offers, “also called Mithrandir.He was a companion of mine on Middle-Earth, and I owe him many things.”

“And I, her,” he says.“But more importantly, there is tea.Follow me.”

I have a choice, of course.I need not follow this strange friend of Galadriel’s—but there are other things which I do need, things such as food and drink and clothing and perhaps even a place to live, and those things will either be created by myself through much effort, or given.

And it is far easier to, say, build a house, if one already has a few articles of clothing—and there are so few, I suspect, who would deign to give _me_ such.

And I do miss conversation and companionship.

“I may as well, then,” I speak, and follow this Olórin to the end of the field and beyond.

***

The house is warm, with candles lit, tables made of well-cared-for wood—

And there is another person in this room.

“Ah, Frodo, I had thought you would be asleep by now,” Olórin says, but I can barely process these words for I am trying to process how _small_ the person before me is.I have seen children, of course, but this is not a child, and yet is the height of one—though I suspect that to say anything regarding this would be rude.

“…There was sleep and then there was not, Gandalf,” this Frodo responds.“But if you intend to meet with Galadriel and… this other friend… I can take my leave.”

“No, no, sit!The tea in my house is for all.What else is the plenty of Valinor for!”

I am blinking, unused to this much conversation after my long years of death, wondering if Galadriel will leave the rest of us be—but no, no, of course she will not.Three companions it is, then, though I doubt I retain any capability of managing so many conversational partners.

“You sit as well, Fëanor, Galadriel,” Olórin—evidently also called Gandalf—says, and if there is slight hesitance at Galadriel’s name, at her continued presence, she does not show any signs of noticing it.

“_Fëanor_?” Frodo asks.“You do not mean to say… but oh, of course you do, after all we are _here_, where any Elf may…” He stands up, then, though that does not make him any taller. “I have been so impolite, not standing and greeting!”

“It is alright,” I manage, though I am not quite sure how this very short Man—for he must be a Man, brought _here_ somehow, have the Valar changed their ways?—has not turn and run at my mere presence.

“Oh, w-well then,” Frodo sputters.“Is it really, Gandalf? I can leave, it would do me no ill to—“

“Stay, stay.After all, the more people bring the more liveliness.” He winks then, which seems that it should look strange on his face and yet does not.“_Sit_, all of you, I will bring tea.More of it, that is.”

And so it is that we do, Galadriel smirking, an all-too-familiar expression on her, Frodo looking studiously down at his not-quite-hot tea.

So it is very quiet at the table when Olórin steps outside, and as such we can clearly the sound of sparks and explosions out there.

“Is this usual?” I ask.

“Oh, yes,” Frodo says.“That is how he prepares tea.”

Galdriel chuckles into her hand.

“…Right,” I say.

Another few sparking and sizzling sounds pass before Galadriel says, “Frodo here is the one who did it.The mortal who defeated Sauron, that is.”

“…I would not say that,” Frodo says, “though I understand why you do.”

I raise an eyebrow, curious about the passings suggested here, though mostly certain that I should not ask.“Either way,” I say instead, “I am sure you have been of great use to Arda, to be invited here.”

“Use,” Frodo says, seeming to consider it.“Indeed.”

I do not know what to say to that, though a loud opening of the door means I do not have to.“Tea!” Olórin announces.

***

For the next while, a few hours I suspect, while we sip tea and try strange pastries that Olórin refers to as “hobbitish,” Frodo’s tale is recounted to me, though not mostly by him.I learn that he is not quite a Man, though similar, and that he was brave and true… and yet, for most of this telling, he looks down or away, wishing, so far as I can tell, to leave.

And so it is that when the last dregs of tea have been sipped and even Galadriel seems, if not content, willing to leave, each of us walking in respective directions, Olórin offering me a bed—so it is that once I look at that very bed for all of a few seconds, I find myself wandering off in the direction Frodo has wandered.

That takes me through the garden, filled with brightly-colored and spiky things, to a separate building.It is small, sized for its inhabitant.

I knock.

I suspected there was a chance that he was sleeping, or would choose not to answer… but instead the door swiftly opens, his eyes awake and yet seeming so tired.

“Come in,” he says, and I am not quite sure why.

Or perhaps it is for the very same reason that I came.

So I step inside, where candles are already lit.“Watch your head,” he says, and indeed I do, for the ceiling is far too low for my height, and not every chair can support my size—though some can.For clearly this Frodo has become accustomed to living among people far larger than him.

So I sit, and he sits.And since it was I who initiated this meeting, I begin, “You are hurt more than they seem to know.”

He doesn’t sigh; he doesn’t even frown.He simply closes his eyes.“They know.”

“So they think you’ll feel better if they pretend—“

“Something like that,” he says.“Indeed sometimes I do.Other times… I hardly sleep.I think you know of what I speak.”

“Yes.Though I was already dead by the time such guilt reached me. I am sure you’ve heard of it.How many I killed.”

“I have.” He pauses.“But are you going to ask my story now? Make me tell it all?”

“That is not my intention.” But what is my intention? Even I do not know; I saw someone undergoing what seemed so familiar to me, and so I extended a hand.But to what purpose?

“In that case, I am afraid we have likely both had our fill of tea.”

“So you do want to speak of it,” I say.

He looks to me, and there is a strange intensity in his tired eyes. There is more pain there than I imagine can be healed over the course of a mortal lifespan. 

“You would understand what I mean, when I say that I _failed_,” he begins.

“I would.”

“I was meant to destroy the Ring.I was _meant_ to.But at the end… at the very end, I could not.I wanted it all for myself, even knowing… even knowing it would destroy me.It was _for someone else_, it always had only one master, and yet…”

“But it was destroyed,” I say.

“Only because someone else fought me for it.Only because he _happened_ to trip into the fire with it on his hand.

“They say that, too, is my victory, for I once had the chance to slay him but did not—they say my past kindness saved the world.But I am not so sure.And nor do I find it easy to live in the world, after everything.”

I know what I want to say to that: _find who you are! Take it back! Take it all back, everything you have meant to be!_But those words are unlikely to mean much to him, I imagine.But I do not know what else to say, so all I can manage is silence.

“…A strange thing, to speak to my mind,” Frodo says.

Ah, so I did say it then.Even if not with my mouth.

“I am sorry,” I say.“I intended to restrain myself—“

“No.It is… interesting advice.Although half of my days I hardly have it in me to so much as take a walk. And I do not know if I was ever meant to be much of anything. Well, an inheritor of my house, able to take care of it, perhaps to grow something…” He shakes his head.“Those things are lost to me, now.”

I close my eyes in a thought, open them.“The sun will rise.You are a creature of the sun, are you not?”

“A strange way to put it, but yes.”

“My apologies.I did not have much opportunity to speak to mortals in my time.”

He nods and glances to the window, despite how far off dawn is even now.“The sun does warm, here at least.That is something, it is true.”

“Too great a burden was placed on you,” I note.

“But you will say that it was needed, correct? A great burden, and yet one I _had_ to bear, a tragedy and yet a sort of providence—“

“No.I will not say that.If Eru had planned this, it was cruel.”

“Eru… we had no tales of him, where I was born. So it is strange to me how often your kind speak of him.”

“Perhaps that is for the best.The debates on this matter, within my lifetime…” I sigh.“Though I would be amiss to not mention that there is a chance, a sliver, that _were_ there a plan for you, it was not as cruel as I suspect—perhaps whatever happens after a mortal’s death makes up for it.Or perhaps the great reunion of our kinds…” I shake my head.“But even so.”

“Even so,” Frodo agrees.“I am here to heal, and yet I… have not.”

“Perhaps that is because of what you mean to others.Perhaps you have become a symbol rather than simply what you are.”

“That may be so,” he admits.“Although that does remind me.Since I have been here, when I have heard of… of that _Eru_, one thing that did stick with me, if I may mention it, is that he knows what all people are, in their best form.If that is so, I wonder what he sees of me.”

“That is worthwhile to wonder.”

“Would anyone here know? Manwë, perhaps—“

“No,” I say.“Eru aside, the most likely person to know _that_ is… well, yourself.”

“So it is exactly as you said.Strange, I had never heard of you as a theologian.”

“I am not.”

“Speak for yourself as you will,” he says with something of a shrug.“But, your pardon granted, I find myself… perhaps able to sleep.And so—“

“—and so I will leave you to that.”Especially as he has said it is so rare for him, this broken mortal.

“But if you wish to visit again,” he says with something that almost resembles a smile, “you need only knock.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

And so I take my leave, not certain what I am thinking, what I am predicting.My hands are tingling already, wishing to _create_ anew—but yet something else seems strangely settled in me, shocking me.

Because it appears that I have a friend.

A friend who will only last a few decades… but still, that is a start.Not all will hate me in this new life of mine—this proves as much.

And my heart aches, it hurts for how I do not know if I will see my sons again, do not know if Nerdanel, still alive as she is, would ever again wish to talk to me—

But some life is possible.I have been given clothes, I have been offered tea.And I have had… _conversation_.And an invitation to return.

The sun will rise, but until then, the morning star is bright in the sky.


End file.
